Not again, yet another night of restless sleep, despite being really tired after evacuating the student to the ranger's station. All I got was a couple of hours' of good sleep, before waking up in the wee hours of the morning, shivering from the cold (the temperature had dropped to below freezing) and the strong wind blowing. A number of us were woken up by the banging of the toilet's roof which was blown up by the strong wind. Getting out of the sleeping bag, I could feel the nip of the cold.
Today, we would be climbing to the highest altitude than most of us had previously done so, which so far had been Mount Kinabalu (4095m). I knew it was gonna be a long day, and going up to an altitude that I've never been, I gotta admit that I was feeling a bit apprehensive, although I'd been taking Diamox from the day before Day 1 on the trek. As we got ready to go, I was feeling the slightest of ache in my legs, which got me paranoid. Then again, it could be paranoia that was making think that I have a slightest of ache in my legs. At the back of my mind, I was worrying if the lack of sleep and the late night evacuation just a few hours before was going to get to me.
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| Lava Tower |
Trekking up towards Lava Tower (4630m), it was expected it was going to be an upward trek from the word "go!" (or in Swee Chiow's favourite words, "Let's rock and roll!"). Speaking of rocks, the vegetation started getting sparse, as the terrain became rockier and even the bits of vegetation were dwarf shrubs, with the only tall form of vegetation being the giant Senecios, a mutant pineapple looking plant that grew in the alpine desert. Trekking along, I was able to see the wide expanse of rocks of on the rolling terrain, with the cloud sweeping in now and then. The temperature would also vary depending on whether the sun is out or not.
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| The giant Senecios in the background |
During on the rest stops, Swee Chiow took out his GPS to get a reading of the altitude, and told us that we were about 4200m, the highest that most of us had ever been. Of course for Swee Chiow, this is less than half of the highest he'd experienced (8840m). And since none of us had ever been this high, some signs of altitude sickness started showing for some of the students as we continued our way up to Lava Tower. Many of them were having the classic syndrome of a throbbing headache, while a couple of them were nauseous.
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| Barranco Wall at the back. You can see the trail on the left |
We finally arrived at Lava Tower sometime after 1pm, where we stopped for lunch before going down to Barranco Camp at 3860m. Yup, after all that effort, we'd lose the 800m gain in height and end up with a net gain of.. *drum roll please*.. 20m over the previous night at Shira Camp. The whole purpose of climbing to the altitude and then going down to a lower camp, follows the climbing maxim of "climb high, sleep low", which aids acclimatisation greatly. Generally, it is not recommended to climb to a gain of more than 300m in a day, but with "climb high, sleep low", it exposes the body to an higher altitude to allow the body to adapt to the conditions (adapt to the lower oxygen level and increasing production of red blood cells), then descending to allow the climber to rest properly.
Lava Tower is a rock tower
formed thousand of years ago by molten lava which formed the tower and
then solidified and hardened as it cooled. As we trudged around the rock to get to a sheltered area away from the wind for lunch, we passed a couple of tents which had set up camp at that altitude. Sitting down for lunch, we ripped open our lunch packs to see the content: chicken, sandwiches and fruits. I wasn't so keen on the chicken since I found the chicken that we had during lunch on day 1 to be pretty darned tough, but I was so hungry, I just tore right into it and thoroughly enjoyed it. While we were eating, the familiar ravens and mice were hanging around waiting for the scraps again.
Going down from Lava Tower to Barranco Camp proved to be a teeny weeny preview of summit day. Some parts were quite steep, and covered with scree (broken rock fragments and loose rocks). Joseph took the chance to get us mentally prepared by telling us that the steepness was going to be something like 6 hours long, with the scree 3 times deeper. Descending to a lower altitude eased the headache for some of the students, but descending on scree also made the footing unsure. I was quite glad when the scree slopes ended and we scrambled over rocks. Stopping occasionally, the surrounding rock structures were breathtaking, with several caves and increasing number of Senecios, and with the fog rolling in, it was quite a surreal scenery: this was the Barranco Valley.
Just before 3.30pm, with fog getting thicker and obscuring the sun, it was getting a little dark, so we were ecstatic to get into Barranco Camp, almost 8 hours after departing from Shira Camp this morning. As we got into camp and started identifying our bags for the porter to bring into our tent, we couldn't help but notice Barranco Wall, 250metres high. What was daunting was seeing the trail that went up the wall, seeming so small, hence making the wall look a lot bigger and higher than the 250 metres. Oh well, "whatever will be, will be", we told each other, and that's basically been our motto so far. We'll just take each step at a time, and we'll reach the top when we get there. There was simply no point in stressing ourselves out ahead of time and worrying about the future.
As I walked around taking pictures of some of the desert flora, I made the mistake that Joanne (who was part of the first team of Singaporean women who summited Mt Everest) had warned us about before our trip: standing up too quickly. With oxygen getting increasingly scarce, standing up quickly would cause you to be dizzy, and it was definitely not a good thing to be feeling dizzy in front of some cactus. A potential "ouch!" situation.
Here's the numbers for the day:
Max heart rate: 145bpm
Average heart rate: 128bpm
Total calories burnt: 4935
Total time on trek: 7 hours 50 minutes
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| Garden of Senecios |
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